Asylum, by Madeleine Roux

Asylum is about a boy, Dan Crawford, who's a little different. He's way smarter than the kids at his school, a mild social outcast, and is adopted. He also has some psychotic tendencies, for which he sees a therapist. Dan is ecstatic to have the opportunity to attend a summer program at New Hampshire College Prep, and can't wait to get away from the drones at his high school and interact with some like-minded people. Upon arrival, Dan learns that the normal dormitories are out of commission, and that he and all participants will be housed in a former psychiatric ward.


From Day One, Dan feels a strange connection to the building, and discovers that he has the same name as the former warden of the psych ward, a man who was known for strange and inhumane "experiments" on the wards. On top of that, Dan finds a series of strange photos and begins receiving inexplicable, untraceable emails and texts about former patients. Dan's new friends Abby and Jordan help him investigate, but their inquiry turns quickly dangerous, and kids at the program start getting hurt. Will the trio be able to find their link to the dorm and stop the madness?

This book seemed much like a copycat of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children to me. The plot was vastly different, but the format of the book (font, inclusion of photos, etc.) was just too strikingly similar. I think that it wanted to be a horror book, but it didn't actually materialize. I felt that parts of the plot were too sketchy or random, and it just didn't all connect for me. The way it ended did seem to indicate that there would be a sequel - I don't know if I'd read it or not.


Also Try: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs; Variant, by Robison Wells

Knockout Games, by G. Neri

Given all the news attention that's been on the "Knockout Game" lately, I was really excited to read a galley of G. Neri's newest book, Knockout Games.


The novel is about a used-to-be-innocent girl named Erica who moves to the big city of St. Louis with her mom after her parent's divorce. Erica is one of few white girls in her new school and is struggling to find a niche. One of her new teachers urges her into film, but Erica's crazy talents are discovered by the wrong crowd - a gang of kids run by leader Kalvin who plays the knockout game for fun.

Erica immediately gets wrapped up in the "games", taking videos for the club and uploading them to Facebook for the world to see. But when the gang takes out a community leader and accidentally kills his wife (who just so happens to be the same teacher that turned Erica onto film), Erica realizes just how deep into the terror she's become. She doesn't know what to do to pull her way back out, and she's worried that she's put her entire family at risk along the way.

Overall, the novel wasn't as great as I thought it would be. I thought there would be more discussion of the games, how they started, and the kind of nationwide appeal that they've garnered. But, it was very limited to this St. Louis crowd who had apparently been 'playing' for years. There was a lot of bad language in the novel, and considerable discussion of sex - I don't think it would be appropriate for my middle school classroom.

Publication Date: August 1, 2014

JBA Post #13: Shooting Kabul, N.H.Senzai

Shooting Kabul was an intriguing book. It starts off in Afghanistan. Fadi and his family live there but his parents see that things are getting tenser and tenser as the Taliban takes more control, and they know that they need to leave and get to America.
So, they pay human traffickers to take them over the border and eventually to America. During their middle-of-the-night journey, though, a member of the family - the youngest daughter, Mariam - is lost. The family leaves Afghanistan without her, and each member of the family carries a huge guilt, thinking that he/she is responsible for losing Mariam.

Once in America (California, to be exact), Fadi and his family struggle to fit in while still keeping hope alive to be reunited with Mariam. Fadi learns of a photography contest at school that could earn him a plane ticket to India - right near Afghanistan - and he becomes obsessed with winning the competition, and getting back to Afghanistan to find his baby sister.

That doesn't exactly work out for him, but the book does end on a happy note.

I loved this novel, especially because it's about a topic that really interests me. I love to read about the Middle East, the fighting there, etc. The novel taught me something that I didn't know - the Taliban actually did a lot of good for Afghanistan. We only think of them as the radical, power-hungry group that is responsible for lots of death and destruction, but before they got to that point they actually did a lot to help Afghanistan.

JBA Post #3: Sources of Light, Margaret McMullan

I was surprised by this book - to be totally honest, I did not read the synopsis before I started it, and I'm not sure what I thought it was about...but I did NOT expect it to be about the Civil Rights Movement in Jackson, Mississippi!

Despite surprising me with its subject matter, I really enjoyed this novel. It's about a girl, Samantha, who moves to Jackson, MS with her mother right in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement. Sam's mother works as an art history professor at a local college and soon starts giving lectures at another local, all black college. This spells trouble for Sam and her mother - Sam has trouble fitting in at school and has difficulty rationalizing what is going on around her and her mother's involvement in it. 

Her mother's friend, Perry, gives her a camera (hence the title) and she begins to document what goes on around her through photos. She captures things that need to be seen and even finds some of her photos published in a national newspaper. 

The novel has a good bit of action - fights, fires, voter registration riots, and even a murder - which really keeps the pages turning. I'd recommend this book mainly to girls (there are some kissing scenes and a young romance) who are interested in historical fiction.